Dhalgren

'Sure.'

He watched the word hang over the table, silence on both sides.

'I don't want any!' Bobby's chair scraped.

Both candlesticks veered.

'Bobby—!' Mrs Richards exclaimed, while June caught one and Mr Richards caught the other.

Bobby was off into the living room. Muriel barked and ran after him.

'I'll have some, dear.' Mr Richards sat back down. 'Let him go, Mary. He's all right.'

'Muriel? Muriel!' Madame Brown turned back to the table and sighed. 'Peaches sound lovely. Yes, I'll have some.'

'Yes, please, Mother,' June said. Her shoulders were rather hunched and she was still looking at her lap, as though considering something intensely.

Mrs Richards, blinking after her son, rose and went in the kitchen.

'If I went to school,' June blurted, looking up suddenly, 'I'd go into psychology — like you!'

Madame Brown, slightly flattered, slightly mocking, turned to June with raised brows. Mocking? Or, Kidd wondered, was it simply surprise.

'I'd like to work with… mentally disturbed children — like you!' June's fingertips were over the table edge too, but tightly together, and even, so that you'd have to count to find where right fingertips ended and left began.

'In my job, dear, at the hospital—' Madame Brown lifted her glass to sip; as she bent forward, loops of optic chain swung out like a glittering bib, and back—'I have more to do with the disturbed parents.'

June, now embarrassed by her outburst, was collecting plates. 'I'd like to… to help people; like a nurse or a doctor. Or like you do—' Kidd passed his over; it was the last—'with problems in their mind.'

He dragged his hands back across the cloth (spotted with sauce, soup, pieces of carrot, the purple wine blot) and let them fall into his lap.

Mrs Richards' place was nearly as messy as his own.

'I know it's a cliche—' Madame Brown shook her head—'but it really is true. The parents need the help far more than the children. Really: they bring their totally demolished child to us. And you know what they want in the first interview? It's always the same': they want us to say, 'What you should do is beat him.' They come in with some poor nine-year-old they've reduced to a state of numb, inarticulate terror; the child can't dress itself, can't talk above a whisper, and then only in some invented language; it soils its clothing, and the only coherent actions it can make are occasional attempts at murder or, more frequently, suicide. If I said to them, 'Beat her! Hit him!' they would glow—glow with delight. When they discover we want to take the children away from them, they're indignant! Under all the frustration and apparent concern, what they actually come hoping is that we will say, 'Yes, you're handling it all marvelously well. Just be a little firmer!' The reason I'm successful at my job at all—' Madame Brown touched June's shoulder and leaned confidentially—'as all I really do is pry the children loose from their parents — is because what I'm saying, underneath all my pleasant talk about how much better it would be for the rest of the family if they let little Jimmy or Alice come to us, is: Wouldn't it be ever so much more fun to work on one of your other children for a while? Wouldn't it be ever so much more interesting to fight someone with a little more strength left than this poor half-corpse you've just brought in. Why not clear the field and start in on little sister Sue or big brother Bill? Or maybe each other. Try to get an only child away from its parents once they've driven it practically autistic!' Madame Brown shook her head. 'It's very depressing. I really think, sometimes, I'd like to change my field — do individual therapy. That's what I've always been interested in, anyway. And since there's nobody at the hospital now anyway—'

'But don't you need licenses, or special examinations to do that, Edna?' Mrs Richards asked from the kitchen. 'I mean, I know it's your profession, but isn't fiddling with people's minds dangerous? If you don't know what you're doing?' She came in with two long-stemmed dessert dishes, gave one to Madame Brown, and one to Mr Richards. 'I read an article—' She paused with her hands on the back of her chair—'about those encounter group things, I think they call them? Julia Harrington was going to one of those, two years ago. And the minute I read that article, I cut it out and sent it to her — it was just terrifying! About all those unskilled people leading them and how they were driving everybody crazy! Touching each other all over, and picking each other up in the air, and telling each other about everything! Well, some people just couldn't take it and got very seriously ill!'

'Well I—' Madame Brown began some polite protest.

'I think it's all poppycock,' Mr Richards said. 'Sure, people have problems. And they should be put away where they can get help. But if you're just indulging yourself, somebody telling you to straighten up and fly right may be what you need. A few hard knocks never hurt anybody, and who's in a better position to give out a few than your own parents, I say — though I've never lifted a hand to my own.' Mr Richards lifted his hand, palm out, to his shoulder. 'Have I, Mary? At least not since they were big.'

'You're a very good father, Arthur.' Mrs Richards came back from the kitchen with three more dessert glasses clutched together before her. 'No one would ever deny that.'

'You kids just be glad your parents are as sane as they are.' Mr Richards nodded once toward Bobby's (empty) chair and once toward June's; she was just sitting down in it after taking the plates into the kitchen. She put a cut glass bowl, filled with white, on the white cloth.

'Here you are,' Mrs Richards said, passing Kidd his fruit.

In its long-stemmed dessert dish, the yellow hemisphere just cleared the syrup.

Kidd looked at it, his face slack, realized his lips were hanging a little open, so closed them.

Beneath the table, he clutched the table-leg so tight a band of pain finally snapped along his forearm. He let go, let out his breath, and said: 'Thank you…'

'It's not terribly exciting,' Mrs Richards said. 'But fruit has lots of vitamins and things. I made some whipped cream — dessert topping, actually. I do like real cream, but this was all we could get. I wanted to flavor it almond. I thought that would be nice. With peaches. But I was out of almond extract. Or vanilla. So I used maple. Arthur, would you like some? Edna?'

'Lord, no!' Madame Brown waved the proffered bowl away. 'I'm heavy enough as it is.'

'Kidd, will you?'

The bowl came toward him between the candles, facets glittering. He blinked, worked his jaw slowly inside the mask of skin, intent on constructing a smile.

He spooned up a white mound — with the flame behind it, its edges were pale green.

Madame Brown was watching him; he blinked. Her expression shifted. To a smile? He wondered what his own was. It was supposed to be a smile too; it didn't feel like one…

He buried his peach.

White spiraled into the syrup.

'You know what I think would be lovely?' Mrs Richards said. 'If Kidd read us one of his poems.'

He put half his peach in his mouth and said, 'No,' swallowed it, and added, 'thanks. I don't really feel like it.' He was tired.

June said, 'Kidd, you're eating with the whipped cream spoon.'

He said: 'Oh…'

Mrs Richards said, 'Oh, that's all right. Everybody's had some who wants some.'

'I haven't,' Mr Richards said.

Kidd looked at his dish (a half a peach, splayed open in syrup and cream), looked at his spoon (the damasking went up the spoon itself, streaked with cream), at the bowl (above the faceted edges, gouges had been cut into the heaped white).

'No, that's all right,' Mr Richards said. Glittering, the bowl moved off beyond the candle flames. 'I'll just use my spoon here. Everybody makes mistakes. Bobby does that all the time.'

Kidd went back to his peach. He'd gotten whipped cream on his knuckles. And two fingers were sticky with syrup. His skin was still wrinkled from the bath. The gnawed and sucked callous looked like he imagined leprosy might.

Arthur Richards said something.

Madame Brown answered something back.